After many years and much pain, James O'Barr now embraces the long shadow of his comic creation the Crow by focusing on the very light his character cherished in life and yearned for in life after death.

“I have learned (to) appreciate the moment you're in because you may never get it again,” says the Dallas artist and writer. “And probably that just comes with age. I'm 20-something years older now. And I don't take the sunset or a special moment with someone where we definitely connect ... for granted at all anymore.”

O'Barr will shed more light on his dark antihero and brighter outlook Sunday at a free screening of the 1994 Brandon Lee movie “The Crow” at Alamo Draft-house Stone Oak.

He will sign copies of “The Crow: Special Edition” (Gallery Books, $18), an expanded re-release of his original comic that inspired the movie. He'll also take part in an after-movie Q&A. The black celebration starts at 5 p.m.

O'Barr began crafting “The Crow” in 1981. The character first appeared in print in a Caliber Press anthology in 1989. The comic book series that followed would spawn the '94 film and several sequels, plus a TV series and more books and comics.

O'Barr calls the comic, and to some extent the first film, “a love letter that is kind of bracketed with violence.” And it doesn't get much more passionate or intense than the story of Eric Draven and the tragedy that inspired him.

Eric is madly in love with his fiancée, Shelly. When thugs rape and kill Shelly and leave Eric for dead, a mystical crow guides him from death to revenge, transforming him into a dark, avenging angel who rocks black eyeliner like Ziggy Stardust and a body count like the Terminator.

O'Barr has said before that he created the Crow after his fiancée was killed by a drunken driver when he was 18. In the introduction to the “Special Edition,” he writes that she was killed just as she was headed to her car to pick him up because, of all things, he needed a ride since he hadn't paid his car insurance.

O'Barr long blamed himself for her death. Time and perspective helped heal that wound.

“Initially, the book was intended to be a kind of therapy for me to explore this relationship I had with a girl who was Shelly and some place to vent all the rage I had had, having lost her for no damn good reason at all,” O'Barr says. “And it's kind of changed over the years to where it's more of a celebration about appreciating what you had at the time you have it and not in retrospect. And I have learned to do that.”

“The Crow: Special Edition” features 30 pages of never-before-seen artwork, including a scene called “An August Noel,” a new closing segment called “Sparklehorse” and previously cut pages of what O'Barr calls “just pure base violence.”

Such anger and anguish claw throughout the Crow's scratchy black narrative in print as well as in the '94 film that starred Lee, son of martial arts star Bruce Lee, in the title role. O'Barr worked closely with the film's director Alex Proyas and spent a lot of time on the set.

In 1993, O'Barr would revisit what he calls in the book “the same guilt and self-hatred” when Brandon Lee was killed by a dummy bullet accidentally fired from a prop gun while filming a scene. A stunt double and special effects were used to finish the movie.

As with his comic creation, O'Barr found pain and eventually peace with the film.

“For the most part, I have fairly well come to terms with most of it,” he says. “March 31 was the anniversary of Brandon's death. So I had kind of a bad day because, to some degree, I do still feel responsible in some dog logic kind of way. But for the most part I have a blessed life and I feel privileged to have known Brandon and called him a friend. And he's certainly the last one that would want me to carry around any kind of guilt over that.”

O'Barr stresses that the story of Eric and Shelly is over, but he still plans to keep the legacy of The Crow alive.

He's currently working on a Crow limited series comic for IDW Publishing based on a treatment he originally wrote for Miramax Films. IDW also will debut a Crow comic in July by horror writer John Shirley, who penned the first draft of the screenplay for the first “Crow” film, with art by Kevin Colden.

O'Barr says that while Miramax paid him for his original treatment, which ultimately got shelved, he couldn't help but notice several years later that the studio released a similar story — about a woman killed at her wedding — with the two-part “Kill Bill” films by Quentin Tarantino.

“Granted, there's a lot of kung fu nonsense in there that I wouldn't have done,” he says.

Fans may be surprised to learn O'Barr has a place in his heart for a different genre: the Old West. He's halfway done with a sprawling gothic western comic, a 300-page opus painted in full-color with anamorphic panels to look like a spaghetti Western.

“It is very based in history and fact,” he says. “But it has a lot of the same dark, romantic elements as the Crow. It's just as brutal, it's just as violent and it's three times more romantic.”

O'Barr will have some of that art on hand Sunday at the “Crow” screening, further proof he continues to find light in darkness.